The present invention relates generally to seats for mass transit vehicles, such as buses, and more particularly to cantilevered seats having blowers located below the seats for blowing into the interior of the vehicle air of controlled temperature or humidity.
Conventional cantilevered seats for mass transit vehicles are shown in Barecki U.S. Pat. No. 3,897,974. These seats are supported by a frame structure comprising a pair of horizontal members extending outwardly from a side wall of the vehicle and a pair of diagonal brace members extending diagonally outwardly and upwardly from the side wall of the vehicle to an outer portion on the outwardly extending horizontal frame members. Other bracing is also provided. The entire frame structure is closed within a housing mounted on the frame structure and supported thereby, and the housing provides no significant supporting function for the cantilevered seat.
The housing is generally trough-shaped with a bottom and a pair of sides, the bottom being inclined upwardly from the side wall of the vehicle to the bottom of the cantilevered seat, per se. The bottom of the housing has an opening through which air may be blown from a blower located within the housing and mounted upon the frame structure therein. Temperature or humidity-conditioned air is blown through the opening in the bottom of the housing in a direction substantially the same as that in which extends the axis of the opening.
Additional bracing is generally required within the housing, as part of the frame structure, to support the blower. The blower is not supported upon the housing which, as noted above, performs no significant supportive function. The additional bracing required to mount the blower within the housing tends to clutter up the interior of the housing and constitutes an additional expenditure for structural components.
Not all cantilevered seats within the transit vehicle are provided with blowers inside the housings underlying the seats. Only enough seats are provided with blowers to provide the necessary volume of air required to condition the temperature or humidity within the vehicle interior. Generally, the blowers are located at spaced locations from the front to the back of the vehicle. However, different locations of the vehicle have different requirements for conditioned air.
For example, the requirements at the front or back of the vehicle, respectively, may not be the same, and each may differ from the requirements near the middle of the vehicle. On vehicles having exits near the rear of the vehicle, requirements at that location are different from the requirements at other locations within the vehicle. Providing a cantilevered seat with a housing having an opening through which air is directed solely in a direction conforming to the axis of the opening, as in conventional seats, provides little flexibility from the standpoint of satisfying the different conditioned-air requirements at different locations in the vehicle.